Why Soccer Is the Most Exciting Sport to Watch?

04/02/14

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Why Soccer Is the Most Exciting Sport to Watch

The World Cup championship match is the single most viewed sporting event on earth. The 2010 final between Spain and the Netherlands was watched by 700 million people. Despite the fact that Soccer is the most popular game in the world, many team sports fans, such as Basketball and Baseball, argue about the question of what is the most exciting sport to watch. If you asked an American, he might say American Football is the most interesting game whereas an Indian would say Cricket. However, I disagree with both of them. I believe that Soccer is the most thrilling sport to watch because of its focus on the game, its unpredictability, and the variety of playing styles used.

Soccer games focus more on playing the ball for a period of time without any stops that would lose the spectators’ attention. In American Football, each team has three timeouts in each half, which totals six per half game. This allows TV channels to utilize these timeouts for advertising to generate more money, which makes the viewer lose full attention because of the many breaks. However, in Soccer the game is 90 minutes long, and it is divided into two 45-minute-long halves. This only allows the channels to display advertisements once which enables the watcher focus more on the exciting match.

A Soccer match is usually full of surprises which make it hard to predict. A small tactical error might affect the whole game. Because human behaviors are very difficult to predict, soccer games cannot be predicted easily. During the last game between Real Madrid and Barcelona on the 23rd of March, a player from Real Madrid made a mistake that completely changed the match result. After the other team scored a goal, the player couldn’t control his anger and made a very dangerous tackle, so the referee sent him off the field and the team continued the game with only ten players. Such a decision from any player makes it very hard to...